Makeshift Patriot – 10 Years Later

Makeshift Patriot – 10 Years Later

“Recorded in October 2001, Sage took just enough time to refine his prose while still exposing his raw nerves. The rapper from Providence, R.I., visited Ground Zero five days after the attacks, and this track recounts his frustration at the bandwagon patriots on the news and in the city, people all too quick to jump in line behind our leaders and cease asking critical questions.He as much as predicts the subsequent creation of the Patriot Act, warning “Freedom will be defended at the cost of civil liberties.” He decries a media which at the time was panicking America into a patriotic fervor by showing the attacks on the news over and over and over again, while a city and nation in mourning were still trying to heal. Pretty powerful stuff, a snapshot of the times, with an air of urgency, immediacy, and sadness.” – Houston Press

LYRICS

Makeshift Patriot
The Flag Shop Is Out Of Stock
I Hang Myself at Half Mast

Makeshift Patriot
The Flag Shop Is Out Of Stock
I hang myself…via live telecast.

Coming live from my own funeral, beautiful weather offered a nice shine,
Which is suitable for a full view of a forever altered skyline.
When times like these arise I freestyle biased opinions every other sentence.
Journalistic ethics slip when I pass them off as objective. “Don’t give me that ethical shit.”
I’ve got exclusive, explicit images to present to impressionable American kids,
And it’s time to show this world how big our edifice is.
That’s exactly what they attacked when a typically dark skinned Disney villain,
Used civilians against civilians and charged the Trojan horses into our buildings.
Using commercial aviation as instruments of destruction,
Pregnant women couldn’t protect their children. Wheelchairs were stairway obstructions.
Now have to back petal from the shower of glass and metal,
Wondering how after it settles we’ll find who provided power to radical rebels.
The Melting Pot seems to be calling the kettle black when it boils over,
But only on our own soil so the little boy holds a toy soldier,
And waits for the suit and tie to come home. We won’t wait ’til he’s older,
before we destroy hopes for a colder war to end.
“Now get a close up of his head.”

Makeshift Patriot
The Flag Shop Is Out of Stock
I Hang Myself at Half Mast
”How does my hair look?”

Makeshift Patriot
The Flag Shop Is Out of Stock
I Hang Myself at Half Mast
“Run that tape back!”

Makeshift Patriot
The Flag Shop Is Out Of Stock
I Hang Myself at Half Mast
“It looks JUST like a movie.”

Makeshift Patriot
The Flag Shop Is Out Of Stock
I hang myself…while the stock markets crash.

The city is covered in inches of muck.
I see some other pictures of victims are up.
Grieving mothers are thinking their children are stuck.
Leaping lovers are making decisions to jump,
While holding hands to escape the brutal heat,
Sometimes in groups of the three.
The fall out was far beyond the toxic cloud where people look like debris.
But all they saw after all was said, beyond the talking heads,
Was the bloody dust with legs looking like the walking dead, calling for meds.
Hospitals are overwhelmed. Volunteers need to go the hell home.
Moments of silence for fire fighters were interrupted by cell phones.
Who’s gonna make that call to increase an unknown death toll?
It’s the one we rally behind. He’s got a megaphone and he’s promising to make heads roll.
We cheer him on, but asbestos is affecting our breath control.
The less we know the more they fabricate. The easier it is to sell souls.

“There is a new price on freedom, so buy into it while supplies last. Changes need to be made! No more curbside baggage. 7 pm curfew. Racial profiling will continue…with less bitching. We’ve unified over who to kill, so until I find more relevant scripture to quote…remember: our god is bigger, stronger, smarter, and much wealthier.
So wave those flags with pride, especially the white part.”

We sell addictive 24 hour candle light vigils in TV’s.
Freedom will be defended…at the cost of civil liberties.
The viewers are glued to television screens. Stuck. Lots of things seem too sick.
I use opportunities to pluck heart strings for theme music.
I’ll show you which culture to pump your fist at & which foot is right to kiss.
We don’t really know who the culprit is yet…but he looks like *this*.
We know who the heroes are. Not the xenophobes who act hard.
“We taught that dog to squat. How dare he do that shit in our own back yard!”
They happened to scar our financial state and char our landscape.
Can you count how many times so far I ran back this same damn tape?
While a camera man creates news and shoves it down our throats on the West Bank,
With a ten second clip put on constant loop to provoke US angst.
So get your tanks and load your guns and hold your sons in a family huddle,
‘Cause even if we win this tug of war, and even the score, humanity struggles.
There’s a desperate need of blood for what’s been uncovered under the rubble.
Some of them dug for answers in the mess. The rest were looking for trouble.

Makeshift patriot
The flag shop is out of stock
I hang myself at half mast.

Makeshift patriot
The flag shop is out of stock
I hang myself…
DON’T WAIVE YOUR RIGHTS WITH YOUR FLAGS.

13 Comments

this song helped shape the way i looked at music and the world into a more mature perspective. sacrifices are sometimes made, but they don’t have to be all the time. we need to take initiative as individuals to be responsible for our own nation. PEACE

I remember my best friend was trying to talk me into giving underground hip hop a try…I was pretty reticent since I had vowed to stop listening to rap years earlier(thank you mainstream garbage)since it was getting quite unabashedly racist and just downright 3 ring circus-like.
This is one of the first tracks I listened to and it was definitely on point and reflected many of my observations. It was good to see that rap, an art form I loved, could be intelligent, conscious and well done. Thank you Sage, for your contributions to hip hop. Much Love, PEACE!

It was songs like this that inspired me to take my notebook scribbles and put them behind a mic. Years later I have since abandoned stages with spotlights but I will never lose the spine this helped me to erect to stand up for those rights which require a voice when all those who agree sit quietly afraid. Thank you.

Thank you Sage, for reminding us of what we were really going through ten years ago… The fist pumping, the war drums and the cult-like patriotism that took over the country. When I tell the story of 9-11 to my children, I will always include the vicious backlash of hate and xenophobia, the rush to justify military actions and how scary it was to dissent. It was the only time in my life in this country when speaking against foreign policy made strangers scream at me & threaten violence, when I was afraid that my windshield would be smashed because of my political bumper stickers… But we stood up anyway. Thank you Sage for being the voice of right all along.

Beth,
Thank YOU for helping me make sense of what this means to other people. I’m glad I documented these events the way that I did rather than just let it slip by and submit to the media’s version of our whole experience.

This song was introduced to me by a friend, an avid hip-hop fan who was blown away by this articulate observation of human reaction & felt the overpowering need to share it with everyone ‘on this side of the pond’. While we in Ireland watched the aftermath of 9/11 unfold, and prepared for America’s ‘world police’ attitude to spread, it was refreshing to hear your voice Sage, soar above the cries for war & strike a chord with us. Don’t ever stop man

I was 10 when this happened; I didn’t understand the extent of anything. I just saw the same sickening video of the plane crashing and the towers exploding from different angles. They interviewed everyone, always getting the same horror-stricken faces and crying but no one had answers. I vividly remember how suddenly every single person had a flag- it felt like the more they had the more patriotic they seemed. I couldn’t understand that concept, nor the instant, undeserved rage people had when they saw a brown person. I still don’t understand that; I’m honestly afraid that the general public will relapse of into that fear, blaming and hating “the enemy.”

came up on this site after some wiki-research about the “new” psychological disorder called depersonalization. After a year of living like a monk with the streets as my monastery some fear of other got the better of me. With little interest in the online it is rare that I make time for surfing but tonight I am alone with a laptop in a Bernal Heights flat looking for a kindred soul.

10 yeas ago I dropped out of journalism school at Rhode Island College. Actually, I was in a psychology class on 9/11 when the first plane hit the tower. A couple months later I’m in a volvo moving to San Francisco by way of Big Sur. At that point, only somewhat versed in the AOI stuff coming out of my home state, Makeshift Patriot dropped. That crazy blue record really hit my mind and the relevance shaped my thinking tremendously. While working my ass off to afford SF rent I never made it to Slims or the Legion of Honor to catch a Sage show which was probably for the better because the anti-con scene had become kind of zoo-ey out here. But that record played endlessly in my little apartment in the sunset. It mixed well with Mr. Lif’s emergency rations and I phantom amidst other oldies that I scoured for beats. Like a kid digging a hole in the sand at Narragansett town beach I began searching all the great bay area record stores because through Sage’s fearless hip hop journalism I was inspired to be a part of this movement. Until one night when somebody broke into my place and housed my decks, samplers, mixer and guitar. Thankfully, the crates of records were too heavy so I got to hang on to those.

Shortly after I began making my way back to RI with the hope of connecting with this force of relevance. But it seemed I was too late seeing Sage strutting around AS220 with a big Epitaph leather jacket and that beautiful mind all blown up- some ego induced big fish in a small state thing. It was a seeming trend during that time in RI as AS220 was also blowing up even the high school I graduated from, The Met, had taken it’s radical educational model global. While these changes only reinforce the law of impermanence- that everything is always undergoing continuous change, it was difficult to deal with. I suppose kittens become cats (sometimes fat cats).

10 years after 9/11 inspired some clear and honest muckraking hip hop I suppose I am just thankful that Sage rose to the occasion. I stupidly held on tightly to the idea that a local hip hop hero could go on to bash apart the entire status quo (strangely enough by painting himself as the anti-hero). So, thank you, 10 years later, for the inspiration.

That wasn’t a big leather jacket. It was a canvas jacket. And however you perceived me and all the other happenings in RI during that time seems to have a lot more to do with you than anyone else. I’ve stayed highly active on all levels I possibly can while doing my best to keep my distance from “what about me me me” types. And, ya know, that’s tough to do at a place like AS220. haha. Take care.

Your music is deep and poetic, it rattles me, and makes me see the world at a different focus. You have the gift of seeing things for how they are, and expressing them so simple and clear, and I like the sound of your voice.
You have my respect and admiration, I will never steal from, but always pay for your music!